Markets are ubiquitous in our daily life and, despite many imperfections, they are a great source of human welfare. Nevertheless, there is a heated recent debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. In fact, competitive pressure on markets may create strong...

This paper studies the role of governments and its link to trust. We argue that the public's trust strongly depends on governments delivering on their core tasks in a market economy. In some economies, a neglect of core tasks can be observed and there seems to be some erosion, notably in terms...

This paper employs the methodology of constitutional political economy to examine the definition of citizenship, and the delineation of the rights that accompany citizenship. The concepts developed are then applied to the question of how rights and citizenship should be defined in the European...

We present new data documenting medieval Europeś "Commercial Revolution" using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to test whether medieval universities played a causal role in expanding economic activity, examining the foundation of Germanyś first...

A recent experimental study by Falk and Szech (Science, 2013) concludes that "markets erode moral values". If this were true, economists, who have emphasized the efficiency enhancing effects of markets for centuries, would have to reconsider their judgments fundamentally. This would be no less...

This paper examines how varying antidumping methodologies applied within the WTO differ in the extent to which they reduce targeted exports. We show that antidumping duties, on average, hit Chinese exporters harder than those of other targeted countries. This difference can be traced back in...

Why does inequality vary across societies? We advance the hypothesis that in a market economy, where earning differentials reflect variations in productive traits among individuals, a significant component of the differences in income inequality across societies can be attributed to...

Populist movements increasingly challenge liberal Western market democracies. Populism can be explained only in part by phenomena like globalization and digitization producing winners and losers in economic terms. Growing feelings of alienation from the market-democratic system and the perceived...